Into the Storm

by Equimorto

Prophecies

Twilight's sword was magically cleaned of all remaining traces of blood, the stains hissing as the magic enveloping them made them evaporate. The metal surface of the weapon started to lightly glow due to the temperature, the runes carved in the handle thankfully preventing the spell's heat from damaging it. The flow of magic was cut, the unicorn giving the blade a brief examination before deciding it was properly cleaned and sheathing it back to her side. Having to carry it around was a little uncomfortable, but she didn't want to run the risk of drawing undesired attention by teleporting it to her if she needed to use it.

She started walking deeper inside the building, the padding on her hooves making little to no sound on the stone floor. The short black cape she wore, her helmet and her leather armour, along with the way her tail was cut extremely short and her mane was combed made it hard to tell her shape from the shadows. She lowered the grey piece of cloth around her muzzle with her magic, leaving it to hang around her neck and allowing herself to breath freely in the cleaner air. The scent of various herbs hit her nostrils and she noticed a low flickering light coming from an open door to the side up ahead.

She entered the small candle-lit room. The four walls were completely hidden by overfilled shelves, their contents ranging from magic books to alchemic ingredients to weapon-repair kits to enchanted ropes, with just about anything in between. The only sections of the walls that weren't covered were the room's two doors, the one Twilight had entered through and the one on the other side, the way the shelves curved to perfectly match their outline effectively making it impossible to see any part of the walls. A series of chains dangled from the ceiling, bags of all colours and sizes attached to them.

The seemingly complete lack of organization had always annoyed Twilight. Not as much as the various candles and candelabras sitting either near the wooden shelves or randomly on the floor, but she'd gotten past that once she'd learned they were magically enhanced so that they didn't produce any heat, which allowed them to burn for much longer. Still, even if she didn't like the way things were, or rather weren't, organized in the shop, its owner never seemed to have a problem with it, always able to find whatever clients asked for without the need to check any list or record. Said pony wasn't there at the moment though.

The only other furniture in the room was a large wooden desk near the back. On the desk were a green book opened on the last page, a sheet of paper with a complex series of black ink lines and symbols traced on it, and a metal kettle seemingly suspended in midair, golden drops of magical energy falling from the kettle on a crystal below it. Twilight had never seen a process like that, but she deduced it to be some sort of distillation for magic used on an object. Beside that, the only other object was a large clock placed to the side of the desk, the hands showing it was half past nine. Twilight walked a little around, then gave a little hit to one of the candlesticks with her foreleg, the metal reinforcements in her armour ringing against it.

Some shuffling sounds came from the other door, and a moment later a pony entered the room, face and cutie mark completely hidden by a long light-grey hood and a cape that touched the ground, the only visible parts of the pony being the white muzzle and front hooves. Twilight had always wondered what they looked like underneath, but she'd never dared to try to remove the clothing. There could be good reasons for why they chose to stay hidden.

"Hello Twilight. No, don't tell me, you need new candles, a new set of throwing knives for Rainbow, salt, new protection runes, quills, ink and paper, eyes of newt and a bottle of fire pills," the merchant said, already heading for the various shelves without even turning to Twilight.

"Another one of your visions, uh?"

"Part of it, yeah. The good part, at least." The pony climbed up on a chain, grabbing a small glass jar of eyes from a red pouch and throwing it on the desk, where it miraculously landed up straight without shattering.

"And what's the other part?" Twilight asked, turning around to follow the other's movements.

The pony jumped from the chain and grabbed the top of one of the shelves, a hoof grabbing a stack of paper that soon landed on the desk. "A crow. A storm. Something bad is coming, Twilight, something really bad."

"Have you been outside lately? Because I think something bad is already happening."

"I don't know, Twi'. I'd like to be wrong for once, but the numbers tell me this is just the beginning." A small purple sack fell on the desk, the carved stones inside it giving a little chime as their runes glowed a bit.

As the rest of the items she needed fell on the desk Twilight looked at the clock. "Well, the numbers tell me that it takes about half an hour to go back from here, so I better hurry if I don't want to miss the curfew." She opened a small portal with her magic, taking out a few coins and setting them near the book.

"Say, want to buy some sterilized gauze and painkillers while you're at it?" asked the seller while landing near the desk.

"No, we have enough supplies of those."

"Would you rather have too many or run out when you might need them?"

"Ugh, fine." Another coin was added to the pile, the other grabbing the items from a shelf. "What do you even do with all this money?"

"Do you think the stuff I sell just magically appears in the storage room?"

Twilight levitated her purchases inside another portal. "Honestly? I would not be surprised. See you," she said, as she started to head towards the door.

"You sure you don't want to buy an invisibility potion?" asked the merchant, producing a small purple vial from underneath the cape.

"See you."

---

"Okay Twilight, maybe when someone who can see the future asks you if you want to buy something you should say yes," The purple unicorn quietly muttered to herself, her body pressed against a wall as she peered around a corner while trying to remain hidden. "I just hope I won't be needing the gauze and drugs anytime soon."

Her head peeked a little into the street. Timberwolves, about a dozen of them. She could usually deal with timberwolves, but usually there weren't that many. Normally there would be about three or four. Very rarely some groups could get up to six members, and in those cases she avoided them, but most of the time they weren't more than five. They used to be more of an inconvenience than a real problem, but things had gotten a lot more complicated once they'd somehow become immune to magic, not to mention a lot more resistant in general, which made them a lot harder to deal with.

The protective barrier meant she couldn't teleport back to the base, that was the whole reason why she had to walk to places. She wasn't fast enough to outrun them, and she had to get through there, otherwise she would have ended up locked outside for the rest of the night. Trying to sneak past them wasn't an option, using an invisibility spell would have just made things worse, since they could sense magic. She could maybe distract some of them with some magical lures, but that would likely only take care of about half of them, and eventually they'd trace them back to her, meaning she wouldn't have much time.

That meant only one thing. She'd have to fight them.

She silently drew her sword, bringing it to her side. With careful movements of her horn she produced a series of small glowing balls of energy, then sent them in the street, where they floated just enough time to grab the wolves' attention before darting away down the other streets. After a couple of glances with each other, six timberwolves started chasing them. Not as many as she'd hoped, as that left her with another seven to deal with, but she wouldn't gain anything from waiting. She took one last deep breath, prepared herself, then teleported with a flash of her horn.

She appeared behind one of the wolves, her weapon already lodged inside its skull. A good trick she'd learned to use when she had the opportunity to take her enemies by surprise, but not one she could risk trying out on a moving target. The wolf blew up in a small cloud of dust, the rest of the pack turning towards her. They slowly started to spread out, trying to surround her, their eyes fixed on her as they growled menacingly. One of them suddenly tried to charge her, but its distance gave her time to react. She produced a small tendril of magic from the ground, tripping the creature, and as its body careened forward she slashed its exposed underside with her blade. The wolf disintegrated behind her.

Concentrated on taking care of that one, she didn't realize two more had started to run in her direction. She barely avoided the first one with a jump to the side, but the second one landed on her, pinning her to the ground. Her armour luckily protected her from its claws, and as the wolf tried to bite her she was able to swing her sword to the side of its neck, passing it from side to side. The creature reared back, and Twilight was able to teleport away. Another wolf jumped at her as soon as she reappeared, but with one broad swing of her weapon she cut off all four of its limbs, ducking below the creature's body as it fell behind her, its mouth uselessly trying to bite at her short tail.

The four remaining timberwolves began to circle around her. Knowing they would try to trick her on focusing on the first attack only to have the rest of the pack jump at her once she was distracted she decided to act first. She jumped towards one of the wolves, her sword pointed forward as she focused on the others' reactions. At the last second she stopped, and her weapon curved its trajectory in mid-air, hooking under the jaw of one of the creatures which had tried to jump on her thinking she was distracted. The sword then smashed the wolf's body onto that of the wolf to Twilight's other side, the first one blowing up. Twilight quickly turned towards the one behind her, and as the glow of her horn intensified a roughly pony-sized chunk of the street was lifted up and sent flying towards it, taking the creature by surprise and smashing its body against a wall.

It took her a moment too long to turn back though, and she was tackled back by the wolf she'd faked attacking, her sword slipping away from her magical grasp and bouncing down the street as her head bashed against the ground. She was able to take it back fast enough to place it between herself and the wolf's head, the creature's jaws biting the cold steel instead of her neck, but soon the second wolf grabbed the handle in its teeth, trying to take the weapon away. Unable to move, struggling to maintain control of her weapon and with little time to think, Twilight did the first thing that popped up in her mind.

Instead of trying to push away the wolf above her with her magic, which she knew from experience wouldn't have worked, she let go of the weapon and focused all of her energy on lifting herself up. Her body violently lifted off the ground, taking the wolf with her, the creature still biting down on the sword. After a couple of seconds, already higher in the air than some rooftops, Twilight stopped powering the spell and teleported to the ground as she was starting to fall, the wolf howling helplessly as it crashed to the ground. Twilight turned to see where her weapon had landed, only to find the last remaining timberwolf standing between her and the sword.

The creature began to slowly approach her, Twilight shifting her attention between the wolf and the sword behind it. She couldn't risk teleporting there, as the creature's reflexes and the short distance would have allowed it to jump on her as soon as she did, and the sword was too far for her to use her telekinesis. The wolf kept walking closer, growling at her. She needed to get it far enough for her to have time to grab her weapon after she teleported, so she started to walk back, soon hitting a wall. The beast kept moving closer and closer.

"Not yet," Twilight murmured to herself, "not yet. Just a little more. Just a little more."

The wolf was now close enough for her to see the mark in its neck from where she'd previously hit it. It seemed like it was going to force Twilight in a corner by walking, but at the last second it jumped at her instead. Moments before it landed on her, Twilight disappeared in a flash of light. She reappeared near the sword, and immediately she grabbed it and rolled on her back, thrusting the weapon in the direction from where she heard the timberwolf howling at her. The mass of bark and twigs landed next to her, the sword piercing its head through its mouth. Twilight got up and started to walk down the street, giving one last stab at the previously mutilated timberwolf still laying on the ground before sheathing her weapon.

---

"I'm here!" Twilight called, walking through the large door of the building. No one answered back.

The unicorn started to walk through the main hall, frowning worriedly at the lack of response. The rooms seemed to all be empty, and nopony was in sight. She was about to call again when she heard what sounded like a scream coming from deeper in the building. Immediately starting to run towards the source of noise, she rounded a corner and saw light coming from the half open door at the end of the corridor, leading to the room where the infirmary was located. She started to run faster, the screams of pain becoming clearer and louder as she came closer to the room.

She finally entered, and what she saw made her blood freeze in her veins, her body almost falling as she was overtaken by vertigo. The floor was covered in blood, a trail that led from the window to the operating table, where it pooled, another smaller trail going from the table to the storage room's door. Her body splayed over the table, both of her wings mauled and torn, missing half of one of her forelegs, her light-blue coat covered with blood stains, the bandages around her damaged limbs glistening a bright crimson as blood kept pouring from her wounds, her eyes shut as she screamed yet again, Rainbow Dash weakly twitched in pain. The pegasus opened her eyes, and upon seeing Twilight she instinctively tried to smile and pretend nothing was wrong.

"Hi, Twilight," she weakly forced out in a barely convincing calm tone. "Don't worry about thiiishmmmm-" she bit down on her lip, trying to hide another cry of pain, "- it's just- just a little scra-" her eyes rolled back and she passed out.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

But, aren't the royal guard horribly incompetent?

[Ze1a7in]

Not gonna lie, that shot at the beginning gave me a serious Bloodborne vibe.

[Ze1a7in]

9108909
In canon? Undeniably so. In fanfics? They can be as competent as the Author wants.